
Supertanker captain Marco is called back urgently to Paris. His sister Sandra is desperate - her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter, Justine is spiralling downwards. She holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte has installed his wife and her son. But he hasn't planned for Sandra's secrets, which muddy the waters.... (Full plot summary below)
Enjoy FREE movies and series with your Prime (USA) subscription or when you start a 30-day free trial!
Links compiled using automated software. Availability of offers subject to change / might be region specific / out of date.
Supertanker captain Marco is called back urgently to Paris. His sister Sandra is desperate - her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter, Justine is spiralling downwards. She holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte has installed his wife and her son. But he hasn't planned for Sandra's secrets, which muddy the waters.
Leave your thoughts about Bastards.
| The SkinnyJosh Slater-WilliamsBastards sees director Claire Denis back in her more polarising mode as the dark queen of French cinema, with a work of bewitching atmosphere that veers between the sensual and repulsive. |
| Globe and MailAdam NaymanAs black and sticky and inescapable as a tar pit - a movie whose darkness swallows its characters and the audience whole. |
| Film School RejectsShaun MunroAn ill-organized revenge tale that unfolds in needlessly incoherent fashion, and despite a rather salacious, sexy premise, fails to get the pulse racing. |
| Slant MagazineJesse CataldoConditioning the audience to find dread in every seemingly innocent gesture, the film turns even the simplest touch between family members into something tinged with menace. |
| The New York TimesManohla DargisThe story grips you entirely even if Ms. Denis’s worldview here finally feels like a tomb: terrifying, pitiless, inevitable. |
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleBastards is a thriller truly etched in darkness, pools of black broken mostly by the stricken yet soldiering faces of her main characters, like ships in a sea of stormy nights. |
| VarietyScott FoundasEven at its most opaque, Bastards always exerts a dreamlike pull rooted in Denis’ rhythmic layerings of image, sound and music. |
| Time OutSam AdamsIf Bastards is cold, it’s never clinical; rather, it’s a fully engaged, deeply moral movie about people who are neither. |
| The DissolveScott TobiasDenis’ atmospherics, as usual, carry the day. |
| Total FilmJames MottramDenis’ sparse story delivers details on a need-to-know basis, right up to the finale. Strong on atmos, thanks to Tindersticks’ score, it’ll chill you to the core. |